Twilight : New Moon

Review by Anthony Morris

What is there to say about Twilight that hasn’t been said by a million screaming fans?

Supposedly this series is so popular that it’s moved beyond good and evil and now lives on some higher plain where we’re all supposed to admire it simply for what it is. 

Which, after an hour or so, starts to become a little tricky because for all its strong points (mostly involving shirtless guys) there isn’t actually a story taking place here.

Or if there is, it’s not one that requires two hours to tell...

Bella Swan (Kristen Stewart) is totally in love with hundred year old vampire Edward Cullen (Robert Patterson), even though this love mostly manifests itself by Bella complaining that he won’t make her a vampire so one day she’ll get old.

Then after a social faux pas at her vampire-only birthday party the Cullen family decide it’s safer to move out of town and leave Bella to cry herself into a coma for a few months.

Finally she starts to come out of her shell when she realises that doing insanely risky things conjures up a ghostly image of Edward (warning her not to do them) so, as you do, she gets her hunky native American buddy Jacob (Taylor Lautner) to fix up a couple of motorbikes to she can dice with death.

Surprise surprise, she starts to fall for Jacob, only for him to also suddenly give her the cold shoulder after a screening of action flick FacePunch (tag line: “Let’s Do This!”). Turns out Jacob is a werewolf, which makes him yet more proof that in the Twilight world all guys are insanely violent killers barely able to stop murdering everyone around them.

Good luck with those relationships, girls!

All this drags on for well over an hour, and then suddenly there’s all this stuff about vampire royalty (including Dakota Fanning and Michael Sheen, changing sides after playing a werewolf in the Underworld series) and Edward wanting to die and a really cool vampire-on-vampire battle and glimpse of mysterious future.

Then it’s back to all the drawn out relationship stuff like that brief flash of actual story never happened.

It doesn’t really seem fair to complain that there’s no story here, as this is clearly just an opportunity for fans to submerge themselves in the world of Twilight, the emotional roller-coaster of what it’d be like to constantly be dumped and yet have shirtless guys constantly fighting over you, and the chance to perv at a lot of hunky shirtless guys because the woods near Bella’s house are definitely shirts-optional if you’re a buff werewolf.

But if you’re after anything else at all from this film – you know, like plot, characters (Bella’s human friends are barely one-dimensional) or performances that don’t revolve entirely around pouting - then chances are you’re going to be disappointed.

2 out of 5

Twilight : New Moon
Australian release: 19th November, 2009
Official Site: Twilight : New Moon
Cast:  Kristen Stewart, Robert Pattinson, Taylor Lautner
Director: Chris Weitz